Chris’s allotment blog

Sunday August 16^th

Much digging has been done – I have broken two forks in the process (I must learn not to use them to heave out bramble roots!) I am now armed with a mattock thanks to a raid on my Mum’s tool shed, and a new (unbelievably cheap) fork from Wilko’s – most of the first turning of the ground has been done, thank goodness. Twas a bit of a back-breaker and I ended up turning over a row of soil then sitting on a chair to pick out the weeds and roots. Poor ole dear! All the junk has gone to the tip. All the “haystacks” of weeds and grass have been moved to the composting area. And I’m feeling rather pleased with the progress! The bad news is that a few frogs have had to move house as I’ve pulled up the long damp grass where they used to live but hopefully they won’t have moved far and will still visit me and my “slug café”. I have had my first human visitors as well – Rachael, Gavin and their son Harvey came up to the allotment to look for frogs (sorry, Harvey, none to be seen that day!) and pick some blackberries. And to see where the donated leeks are now growing. Sarah from Transition Ashtead has also been up to see how I’m getting on and identified the Evening Primrose plants that are flowering in the middle of the freshly dug. They were too pretty to dig up!

I’ve experimented with planting some Autumn King carrots – a bit late as they should have been in by the end of July but there are plenty of seeds left for next year if they don’t make it. Maybe it will be warm and wet enough to get a few this year.

The next mission is to find a supply of manure to get the soil in tip-top condition for next year. That’ll be a fragrant job…

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